Art Swing (1x1 remade. Spartan x minus)

[spartan309]

Nicholas watched as Fiona inspected the rusted slide, memories coming back to his mind. He remembered how scared she used to be of the spiders and always asked for her father to go and squish them. He would have smiled if he remembered how when she jumped back a bit from the spiders, but the sort of action was something he could not remember how to do.

He then got up from the swing, walking up to the old, decaying slide to answer Fiona's question on if the slide is capable of use. He First inspected the metal of the slide itself, some of the dull aluminum still able to be seen from the infection of rust. He felt the rust spots, in rough like sand paper. He then gave it a few knocks to see if it was hollowed though which was highly unlikely. "The slide itself is slideable," He said, moving down to the supporting legs, "But let me check the legs to see if you are able to get on it." He said, getting under the slide, the spiders and other critters not effecting him. After a semi-long inspection, he came back up, looking at Fiona with his pale, empty eyes. "After inspecting the legs as well, the slide is eighty-six percent capable to use. I have found two weak areas on the legs and the rust on the slide may be uncomfortable to slide over, but I am ninety-eight percent sure you will not break the slide yourself." He said to her and then walked back to his swing, sitting back on it and slowly jeering his body a little, moving back a fourth a few inches.  

[minus infinity]

Fiona stood by and watched as she saw Nicholas inspect, and then go underneath the old slide. Well, she had to say that was probably something she would never do. The fear of spiders was just too much for her, and that in itself brought back another memory - once when she had wandered into an old house, she had gotten spiderwebs (and their occupants) in her hair. Shrieking, crying and running as fast as she could on four year old legs had ensued. So when he stood back up afterward and gave her his estimates (he was always better at math than she was), her eyes flickered around subconsciously to make sure he had not acquired any free-riders. Finally, though, she gave a small smile and said Thank you sincerely - it was entirely true that she herself would never have the courage to go underneath an old slide that looked ready to collapse upon itself. And there was another flicker of her childhood, clouding her mind like an early morning fog. Nicholas had been the braver of the two of them, and had gone with her into the aforementioned crusty old house. She didn't remember who had dared who to go in first anymore, but that part didn't matter.
A little cautiously, Fiona ascended the small, thin ladder up towards the curved slide itself. Several defiant, groaning creaks protested against her weight as she did so but just this once she had to brave the slide, right?
Now she was at the top, sitting with her knees close to her chest in a childish hesitation of whether or not to go down the big scary slide. With the tiniest hint of a giggle, she looked over at Nicholas from her perch on the slide and said, Well, here's hoping the slide makes it. The poor thing was probably older than she was.
And then she pushed herself down the cold metal slide.

 

[spartan309]

Nicholas did not remember all of the childhood memories that Fiona did, his own mind shrouded in despair and misery. He didn't even look over when she looked at him when she was about to slide, instead just looking down at his feet. He could feel the cold winds splashing on his face as the night sky grew darker and darker as the sparkle of stars began to shimmer in the sky. It began to grow even colder, almost fifty degrees and only getting lower. He missed the warmth of his mothers arms around him, the thought only making him feel even colder.

He grabbed his sketch pad and started a new project. He would call this one "Forgotten Warmth." A small boy was stuck in the middle of a blizzard, under a deep pack of snow. He spots a light shimmering with intense heat, inviting him with open arms, but the blizzard just held the boy back in its frostbitten clutches. The boy was reaching for this heat, but couldn't reach it's grasp.  

[minus infinity]

( OOC / Gonna go to bed after this post, you don't want to know what happens when I stay up too late ... )

The ride was almost as breathtakingly exhilirating it had been when she was a child and Fiona was elated. It works! The slide works! And as the strange sensation of there being a time warp here at the park circled around her mind and spiraled around, Fiona wanted to ride again. And again. And again! Until a parent came to collect them ...
The girl probably slid down seven or eight times before a large spider decided it wanted to partake in the fun and joined her at the top of the slide. With a high-pitched whimper, Fiona was back by the swings just like that. She smiled sheepishly and blushed as she sat down back by her bag and went through it, doing this not because she was looking for anything but because it was sort of a nervous habit. It was something she used when a classmate stared at her in uncomfortable ways, it was a distracting force when she was at home and had nothing to do and it kept her hands warm for at least those few seconds. How cold was it getting, again?
Warmth. Fiona thought about warmth as she leaned back against one of the old swing poles (making sure there weren't any low-hanging spiders first, of course). A blanket, a fire in the fireplace or a mother's loving arms ... having closed them, Fiona opened her dual-colored eyes and looked up at the sky. A few lone stars shone in a cloudy night sky, and a crescent moon shone upon the orange of the streetlights. What time was it? The girl pulled the green sweater tighter around herself and hoisted her bag up onto her lap in a hope of warming it -and herself- up with it's weight or something like that. Oh, she was starting to get tired ...
But when did Nicholas go home? They had school tommorow. How ... ? Fiona closed her eyes again and let her recurring thoughts of warmth lull her into a sense of temporary happiness.

 

[spartan309]

As the the seconds passed by, so did the coldness of the air drop. It was now thirty-four degrees outside and Nicholas was still just sitting on the swing, his pencil moving all over the sketch pad. He seemed unfazed by the almost freezing level of the temperature. He was cold yes, but didn't put thought into it at all. He knew that Fiona was cold, the fact she tightened her sweater and but her bag on her lap just to sustain some heat, but he should be cold to with just a t-shirt and some jeans on. It was to the point where he should be worried about sickness or disease, yet he just sat there, his pale hands working the pencil though the motions as he breath blew around the sketch.

It was soon eleven, the stars now shining brightly on Earth, like tiny snowflakes stuck in space. Nicholas finally stood up, the creaking of the swing signaling this. It was time to go home, his father coming back from work soon. He breathed in slowly, a mist of shroud escaping his lips as he looked back at the swing. He then started to slowly walk back to his home, hands in pockets to try to keep at least a sliver of heat in his body.  

[minus infinity]

Fiona must have dozed off or seriously spaced out because when she opened her eyes again it was because of the creak of the swing, the only other sound accompaning the whistling of the wind. W-what? Her hands felt frozen solid and her legs were almost reluctant to pull her weight up as she stood up slowly and looked around in her sleep-infused stupor. Her eyes flickered briefly at the renewed pain of looking directly into a streetlight's blare and after a moment she saw Nicholas heading home. That meant it was eleven, and so they had been here for several hours. How long had it been, again? Since about sunset. Well, it was probably time she went home too.
With a few pats to her jeans to make sure no dust or leaves had collected there, Fiona slung her bag over her shoulder and began to head home as well. She walked quickly to catch up to Nicholas and to warm up; they had both lived on the same street for many years now. They weren't next door, but they were still fairly close. She remembered how sometimes her mother liked to bake and bring the finished creations down to their house as friendly gifts - the physical closeness had been a huge factor in bringing the two children together.
By the time Fiona caught up a strong chill caught her dark brown hair and flung it around all sides of her face so that she almost took on the appearance of Medusa, wild locks and all - she certainly felt as about as cold as stone right now!
It wasn't much of a long time before their street came into view, familiar houses lit up only by moonlight - many of the others had gone to sleep by now. And in much shorter time than it had been getting to their street, Fiona saw their individual houses. There was still a light on in her house, were her parents still up? She looked briefly towards Nicholas' house. It always looked so lonely to her, especially after ...
The girl shook her head in an attempt to tame her suddenly wild hair and bit back a yawn before turning briefly to Nicholas and saying, Good night, see you tommorow, with a faint smile that might only be seen by the artificial orange of the streetlights above them. Would she ever see him return a smile?

 

[spartan309]

The darkness of Nicholas's house was a common sight, given that no one was ever there. Usually there's some sort of light for the porch or maybe a window light on, but not at his house. Nicholas walked up to the front door, unlocking the door. He opened the door and looked over at Fiona who said her goodbye with a smile that was hard to see with how dark it was. Nicholas just simply nodded and disappeared into to darkness of his home.

After a very warm shower, Nicholas slowly curled up in his bed and drifted to sleep, letting the happy memories and emotions soar though his dreams, the only other place where his emotions are freely expressed.

-time skip-

Four AM. This is the time that Nicholas wakes up for school every day. His father already left for work and Nicholas was left home once more. He peered out his window to find out that it snowed last night! The neighborhood neatly gone over with a blanket of snow. School was still in session yes, but it just brought more ideas to Nicholas's head, getting ready for school.

After a light breakfast, Nicholas was now out the door, heading to his usual location, dead park. He always stayed there till a certain time where he would then walk to school, always making it right when the bell rings. The sky was still filled with stars, the canvas of snow shining from the artificial light of streetlights. He made it to Dead Park, the fluffy snow still bringing no life to a barren wasteland of a park. After wiping off the snow on the swing, he sat down a began work on a new drawing, this being a daily routine of his.  

[minus infinity]

Fiona woke up as her alarm blared at her.6:00. She yawned as she recalled what had happened last night, going to Dead Park with Nicholas for a couple of hours before going back home, taking a long shower to warm herself up and then going to bed. Now she was getting dressed into warmer clothes, remembering how cold she had been last night. And as though to remind her, a cold wind blew into her room through her window and tickled her fair skin. With a shiver, Fiona walked over to her window to close it - and then she saw snow!
Snow! she squealed to no one in particular. We finally have snow! Suddenly excited to go outside, Fiona threw on her clothes - mittens, boots, a scarf and a puffball jacket all over a dark brown turtleneck and green leggings. She pulled her hair up into a messy ponytail, ate a hurried breakfast, brushed her teeth and bounded out the door. It was still too early for school, school started closer to seven o'clock, but playing in the snow would be a fun way to kill time - and the only place she knew that wouldn't be crowded with inconsiderate children was Dead Park. In fact, she was pretty sure Nicholas and herself were the only two that even visited the old park anymore. It hadn't really ever been crowded before, but now it was almost deserted. But maybe in their case, it was just better if it worked that way.
Fiona fell down twice as she sprinted to Dead Park, excited to see snow on the old park equipment again. Would there be enough snow to throw at one another? Yes, that was definitely a prominent childhood memory - she hoped it had snowed enough! Looking out her window a couple of minutes ago, she had been to excited at the mere sight to detect how much had actually fallen overnight.
With one more clumsy fall, Fiona approached the park and soon saw Nicholas. She knew he came here earlier than she did, and wondered briefly if he was cold - certainly the temperature wasn't going to be increasing anytime today. However, she picked up some snow in her mittens, began to pack it between them and said (squealed) to him, Snow! This is so awesome!

 

[spartan309]

Unlike Fiona who was giddy and happy about the snow, Nicholas didn't look any happier if not darker. Yes, snow did give him more ideas, but the downside is that he can barely draw for how cold it was. He had to constantly warm up his hands just enough so he could draw for maybe another forty minutes or so before having to warm them up. Last night was different, it not yet being freezing level, but it was currently twenty-nine degrees and that made a big difference.
Between that estimated two hours that Nicholas was at the park before Fiona arrived, he finished a fairly rushed drawing, even though it look like it took all day to draw, and soon was starting another one he would call Bittersweet Chills of Fun. This drawing was a snowball fight between two kids, a boy and a girl. The bittersweetness was the coldness of the snow slashing on their suits and hitting their faces.

Nicholas then heard Fiona arrive, her squeal of joy ever so noticeable. Without even looking up, he simply said, "Yes. Snow is a very interesting experience in one's life." making even the most fun times seem so boring and dull with his emotionless tone.  

[minus infinity]

(It's weird, it's only like 6PM here in CA and I'm already sleepy. I'm a weirdo. Anyway, just informing you because when I get tired my posts get strange.)

Fiona noticed that Nicholas was wearing maybe half of the amount of layers that she was and raised an eyebrow. Heck, even in all of her layers the cold was still getting to her - how was it that this boy didn't catch a cold? The newly-formed snowball was still inbetween her mittens, and for a few seconds she looked at it as though it would tell her something. What might a snowball say to someone? 'Throw me,' might be an option but wasn't that suicide?
Fiona shook her head at the thought, the quick motion filling her ears with cold air and briefly stopping any other movement she made before she recovered. Thankfully recovery took no more than five seconds and Fiona remembered her plan. If she was at a safe distance as she was now Nicholas wouldn't close his sketchbook to her, Fiona was by the slide and wouldn't have been able to see any sketch as it was. But she could do something else, and that was exactly her plan.
With an exaggerated parody of a athlete's pitch, Fiona slung her freshly made snowball. It landed about a foot away from Nicholas, just by his feet. Fiona had wanted to hit the swing pole just beside him closer to eye level, but this was certainly good enough. She giggled. Wouldn't it be fun if they could have a snowball fight as they had when they were children?

 

[spartan309]

(It's about 6:15 PM here in AZ. I live closer to you than you probably think)

Nicholas did have more than what he was wearing yesterday, a long sleeve shirt added with a scarf and jeans, but wasn't the normal thing to wear right after snow fall. Yet he never got a cold, no mater how long he stayed out with how little he slept. He just had a very strong immune system.
The snowball plunked next to Nicholas's feet, no reaction coming from him, or should a say an expected reaction like a surprise or a jump. He simply moved his eyes up towards the sound of the drop of the snowball, and then moved his eyes back down to his art.
"Please don't wet my sketch book." He said to her as he drew, not even looking at her or giving her any sense of presence.

 

[minus infinity]

(Eeek! Stalker! -weilds frying pan-

and, I'm going to bed after this post. I'll talk to you tommorow. c: )


Fiona nodded in agreement, not wanting to see what it might be like if Nicholas' emotions thawed and the first emotion to make it's debut be anger. So she walked around in long circles, circling mainly around the slide to keep herself occupied and a little warmer than she would be standing and shivering. It sort of looked like she was pacing, but the quick and nervous sounding step-step-step was replaced by a more light plunk plunk sound as her feet dug into the snow. It was so cool [in both senses] to be seeing snow again, it felt like it had been forever and a half rather than about a year. It had been about an eternity since she had seen Nicholas smile. When, exactly, had been the last time?
That day. The day of ...
She didn't remember what day of the week it had been, but earlier in the day (before it happened) she and Nicholas had been playing as young children would, running around and laughing and joking. Jolted briefly back into the present by a harsh wind blowing through her puffball of a jacket, Fiona looked over at Nicholas. She looked away, though, when she remembered the next time she had seen him after their play-date; and after everything happened. It was like in less than one consecutive day he had turned into a completely different person. Suddenly there was no light in his eyes, suddenly all their other friends grew more and more distant until contact had completely stopped. Suddenly he was just a shell of his former self. The younger Fiona had reacted by asking him to come over so many different times her parents thought she was going to ask him to move in with her. She would dig in her old pink backpack and write him notes in her sloppy elementary-age handwriting, maybe ripping off a corner of paper from an old spelling sheet or a piece of construction paper. She didn't remember what she had written anymore, but she remembered she tried to write him every day until her teacher noticed it looked like she was taking a bite out of every homework assignment she turned in. All in all, it had lasted maybe two months; the notes and the dog-eared papers she turned in to the dismay of teachers. Digging through her backpack to find even a small blank sheet of paper, small enough so that no text remained from the original paper but big enough for her to write on ...
Her bag!
I forgot my bag!
In her excitement at seeing snow she had forgotten to retrieve her bag from on top of her dresser. She didn't remember brushing her hair either, before pulling it up into the messy ponytail it was in now. Um, I'll be right back!
And with one more clumsy fall as she reached the icy sidewalk, Fiona was off to go get her bag for school.

 

[spartan309]

Adrian heard Fiona leave, the squish of her feet in the snow getting fainter and fainter. He stayed there for about five minutes longer before finally standing up, packing up his stuff, and slowly walked off to school. His pace was a below average one, taking him about thirty minutes to even get to school where an average person from the park could get there in ten or even less if faster. Adrian was never in a hurry, even back before the incident. He took his time with everything and never liked to rush himself. The only time he ever did rush himself was whenever he played tag back when he was little with Fiona. That was all back in the past though, Adrian not even running for a second since.  

[minus infinity]

Unfortunately, Fiona remembered that she hadn't done any of her homework as she swooped down on her bag and ran out the door again. It was a matter of simply not wanting to when she was at Dead Park, and when she got back home she was more focused on warming back up and going to bed rather than vocabulary and graphs. Well, maybe if she had a little bit of free time she could at least get a few problems done, right?
However, as she got to her frosted driveway a big hand grabbed her by the back of her white puffball jacket and pulled - hard! The girl held back a shriek of terror by sheer force until she was able to realize the big hand belonged to her father. Her father, a man who tipped the scales at around 200 pounds and was over six feet tall, certainly looked intimidating even though in reality he was a big teddy bear. Her father had her dark brown hair, but he had brown eyes - Fiona had inherited her eyes from her mother's side of the family. So why was her father grabbing her so forcefully, anyway?
The huge man turned his teenage daughter around to face him and told her in a deep voice, "Uh uh. Sweetheart, I'm driving you to school." But--
"I have a job interview real close to your school," (so thats why he was so dressed up) "And you stayed out a little too late last night, young lady. Don't think your mother and I didn't notice."
Fiona was busted, plain and simple. She enjoyed the freedom of walking the few blocks to and from school, so being closely monitered by her parents was as close to a punishment as she got without being grounded.
So the girl stepped into her father's old red Regal Buick, settling herself in until she got to school. They would pass Dead Park on the way. Her father had to be paying attention to the newly icy road, so he didn't notice when they passed Dead Park - but Fiona did, and soon she saw Nicholas.
Nicholas! Hey! Hi! Would you like a ride to school? I guess Dad is driving me today ... I've been a bad girl or something. By now her father had pulled over to the side of the street so Nicholas could get in if he chose to, but now he rolled his eyes at his daughter as she joked about being a 'bad girl.'

 

[spartan309]

Adrian didn't get too much farther than he originally started as Fiona's father pulled up, offering him a ride. "Your offer is a kindly one, but my actions on walking is what I decided so I will stick to my original design. Also, I ask you not to stay with me at the park at so late hours. Sleep is essential for a healthy body as well as a top tier education. Because of you stay at the park with me for many hours last night, you neglected your studies and was unable to finish you assignments for warmth was the first thing on your mind." Adrian said, knowing that is what she would do because of how long he'd known her. He then simply looked away and started his slowly paced journey to school.